I want to begin by saying that Patrick Murphy did not
have the easiest job in the world today -- (laughter) -- and that all of
his fellow students who stood up and cheered him may have made it a
little harder even. (Laughter.) But he hung in there and he did it
very well. And he spoke powerfully about this community and his people.
I think we ought to give him another hand. (Applause.)

Father Lockenmier, I want to congratulate you on the
50th anniversary of King's College. You know the Vice President was in
Pennsylvania just a couple of days ago to celebrate the 50th anniversary
of the first computer, ENIAC, over in Philadelphia. So Pennsylvania now
has three 50-year-olds -- ENIAC, King's College, and me. (Applause.)

When your president said that King's College was 50 and
so was I going to be 50 this year, I looked out at all the students and
I thought, it looks a lot better on you than it does on me. (Laughter.)

I was delighted to be here today to review the flood
damage and hear a progress report with your two United States senators,
with Governor Ridge, with Congressman Holden, who is also here and does
a very fine job for his district and Congress, and with Congressman
Kanjorski who spoke today so well. I can tell you there aren't very
many people in the Congress that are as effective, as persistent,
down-right nagging -- (laughter) --in advancing the interests of the
people of their district as Paul Kanjorski. You are very well served.
(Applause.)

He is always nice, he is always dignified; but he is
utterly relentless in your behalf -- no matter what the issue is.

And I want to congratulate your young mayor, Mayor
McGroarty. (Applause.) It's been a long time since I met a public
official with so much energy and enthusiasm. (Laughter.) I don't know
if he ever sleeps. And if we could bottle whatever it is he has and
reproduce it, we wouldn't have to build any power plants in America
for 10 years. (Laughter.) I think he's got a great future.
(Applause.)

I also want to thank all the federal officials who are here
with me, and in particular, the gentleman who is behind me, James Lee
Witt, the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who's
been spending more time with you and more time in Washington, Oregon,
and Idaho than he has in Washington, D.C. in the last several weeks. He
is the kind of person, I think, that reflects the very best in our
national government -- the true spirit of public service.

And all of the federal officials here, including the local
representatives of all of these agencies -- I want to thank them as well
-- they have enjoyed having the opportunity to work with you in this
difficult time.

I'd like to say one more word about Patrick Murphy, because
it makes the point I want to make. I'm not going to make fun of him
anymore. (Applause.) When this disaster was imminent, he and his
brother, J.J., led fellow students to help fill and pile sandbags. A
lot of other young people did that as well. Some of the young
AmeriCorps volunteers who were introduced, our national service
volunteers, also worked on that program. As a lot of you know, the
AmeriCorps program is now headed in Washington by your former Senator,
Harris Wofford, who also helped to create the Peace Corps. (Applause.)

I want to say that we need to find ways to multiply the
spirit shown by Patrick Murphy, by the AmeriCorps volunteers, by the
students of King's College, if we're going to meet our country's
challenges. A couple of days ago I was out in Washington State and
Oregon, viewing the floods there; you may have seen the films. And I
went into the home of a 70-year-old man. He and his wife had literally
just lost everything they had. He was hard of hearing, and he even lost
his hearing aid in the flood; the water washed it away. And I thought
to myself, how do you start over when you're 70? I was walking down the
street toward this man and I thought, how will he feel when I come
there?

And he said to me, "I'm so glad to see you and I've never
met a President before, but maybe it wasn't time. This is the first
time I've ever been able to invite a President into a home with an
indoor swimming pool." (Laughter.)

You know, this is a pretty great country. And the man went
on and introduced me to his wife and his two daughters and his
granddaughter. And he was raving about how all of his friends and
neighbors came to his aid. And they were talking about a man I later
met who was a retired utility company employee, a naturalized immigrant
from Norway, who had worked eight hours with a jackhammer -- well up in
his 60s -- with a cracked rib.

I don't know if any of you have ever tried to hold a
jackhammer in the proper place before, but it isn't easy if you're
young, strapping, strong, and you can breathe well.

But I was looking at all these people -- we were having
this talk and when I left this man's home, I said, I'm really impressed
with your sense of humor and the way you and your wife are handling
this. He said, as awful as it is, he said, it's wonderful. Look at how
we're all behaving. He said, don't you wish we could be this way all
the time. (Applause.)

So I say to the people of the Wyoming Valley, to all the
communities that were hurt so badly, to the people in the rest of
Pennsylvania who suffered so greatly -- all of the members of the
families of people who lost their lives and those who have suffered
heartbreaking losses -- our country has been very moved by your spirit
and by what you have done. Our country has been very moved by
individual examples of courage.

Just a few moments ago, I was meeting in a roundtable with
some people who worked in this flood and some of your local officials.
I met young Eric Malone, who is behind me -- a 19-year-old champion jet
skier who lives just outside Altoona who found out you could run a jet
ski in a raging flood and saved a lot of lives as a result and risked
his own life. And I thank him for doing that. (Applause.) I asked him
if he would give me a ride on his jet ski. (Laughter.) But only on a
calm lake. (Laughter.)

I want to thank Dr. Christopher Breiseth, the President of
Wilkes College who is with us today -- (applause) -- some of his
students are there, I guess -- for the difficult work he had to do in
evacuating his school. I want to thank Jean Wild from Mercy Hospital
who evacuated people there. And, you know, you always think of a
hospital taking people in. Can you imagine the psychological pressure
of evacuating a hospital, the one place every community looks to to be a
pillar of strength and security and hope. I want to thank Jim Syracuse,
the Lucerne County Emergency Management Director -- (applause) -- who
coordinated the evacuation of 100,000 people.

I'll tell you, folks, when something like this happens,
because news is instantaneous, I've become almost just like another
American. I get most of my information off of breaking television news.
And all of America was watching you and pulling for you, and we never
knew, I don't think, how serious this was even with all the gushing
water we kept seeing until we learned that you had to evacuate 100,000
people. That got America's attention.

There are so many others I would mention if I knew them or
if we had the time. I just want to say that I applaud all of you who
looked beyond your own needs to help others and to help people get
through this crisis. You have really shown us, as that elderly
gentleman in Washington said, that America can rise to its challenges
and show its best self. And I thank you for that. (Applause.)

I do want to say something to all the people in
Pennsylvania who tried to be good friends and neighbors to those who
suffered losses. Mr. Witt and I worked together for years in Arkansas
where I was the governor. We saw whole, little communities buried in
floods. We've rescued people off the roofs of their house. We have a
state with the highest per capita incidents of tornadoes in the country.
I have seen whole communities decked by tornadoes. I have seen wind
blowing so hard that literally thin sheets of paper were going so strong
they pierced the bark of trees. I've seen trucks in the tops of trees
and houses moved half a block off their foundations with the foundations
apparently untouched. And, of course, I have seen a lot of people who
lost everything.

And I would just say this: For all the wonderful things
you have done, it's important to remember that the people who really
sustained great losses were more or less in shock for the first several
days after it occurred. And a lot of the most difficult times will come
now and maybe even a week or two or a month from now. So I ask you to
remember that, because this is something the federal government can't
do, that one-on-one personal commitment it takes to get people all the
way through a tragedy.

I will say this: I know that the work of rebuilding and
repairing this state is not over when the flood waters go down or when
the emergencies have passed. And I do want to assure you that we will
do everything we can to continue to do our part until this state and all
its communities are completely rebuilt. (Applause.) I know that about
32,000 registered for help through FEMA at the 800 number or one of our
disaster centers, that we've had over 19,000 home inspections already,
that more than $23 million in payments have been applied for and
dispensed through the Disaster Housing Program.

I want to compliment Denise Ginger, who is also up on the
stage with me. She was at our roundtable, and she got her check within
two days of her home inspection. And there it was, and she wasn't sure
what it was for, because there it was, two days later. And she was such
an honorable person she would not cash that government check until she
made absolutely sure what it was for. I told her if we had a million
more Americans like her, we wouldn't have any problems in this country.
And I thank her. Stand up there. Thank you. (Applause.)

We have approved more than 600 small business loans worth
about $10.5 million to help small businesses and individual homeowners
and renters and nonprofit organizations and some not-so-small businesses
as well. The Department of Transportation has now committed over $20
million. I told the Mayor today that we were going to give him $400,000
to fix that canal along Parkin Street where I was to make sure that it
doesn't break again, and that it is still protection against the floods.

We are going to keep working with you until this job is
finished. That's what we did in working with Florida and California and
the states along the Mississippi River. (Applause.) And we want to do
what Congressman Kanjorski says -- we want to prevent these problems
from coming again.

In 1993 in the wake of those horrible floods, those
500-year floods in the Middle West, the Congress passed legislation that
I strongly supported that enabled us to take up to 15 percent of the
value of the disaster payments to the state when something like this
happens to be spent on mitigation to try to protect people against it
recurring. I said today I was very encouraged by my conversations with
the Governor. When we get a Pennsylvania State Plan, we will look
forward to putting that money in here, and we want to see people
protected from having to go through this again. So far as we can, we
will work with you until that job is done as well. (Applause.)

I'd like to close with a few words that refer to some of
the things the President of this college talked about in his opening
remarks. If you look at what happens in this flood, you know that when
our country works together, we never lose. If you ask me what is the
lesson that you have learned most clearly in the last three years and a
few weeks as President, I would have to tell you that that is the lesson
I have learned. The era of big government is fading. We now have the
smallest federal government we've had in 30 years.

All big organizations are going through changes. We see
that everywhere. It's part of the information and technology revolution
that's going on. We don't need large, big, centralized bureaucracies to
solve grass-roots problems, or to perform big, national functions; we
know that. But that does not mean that we can go back to a time in
America where people were simply left to fend for themselves.
(Applause.)

One of the great and enduring contributions of the Catholic
Church to this country are the Catholic charities and the mission you
see in every Catholic college and university in this country of service,
of understanding that we are all stronger when we help each other to
live up to our God-given capacities; and that is something every
American must remember as we move into this new age. (Applause.)

We are working to balance the budget in Washington. We
should do that. We never ran a permanent deficit in this country just
all the time until about the early '80s. We've cut the deficit in half
in the last three years and we ought to finish the job; but we ought to
do it consistent with our values, which include our responsibilities to
each other, to our parents, to our children, to families who have
disabled children; that's what we ought to do. (Applause.)

If you look at the challenges that I tried to set before
our nation for the future in the State of the Union Address, in every
single instance, there is something for everyone to do, including your
government; it should be smaller, but it should not be weak. When the
floods come, you don't want FEMA and the Small Business Administration
and the Department of Transportation to be weak.

When we argue to open markets so our people can get a fair
deal in selling their goods and services abroad, you don't want a trade
program that is weak. And when people tell you that government is
inherently no good, just remember this: In the last 30 years, we have
spent one-half of your money; one-half of the taxes that you've paid to
the federal government on three things -- national defense, Social
Security and Medicare.

What did you get for that? We won the Cold War, the
poverty rate among elderly people was cut in half, and if you live to be
65 and you start drawing Medicare in America, elderly people have the
longest life expectancy of any group of elderly people in the entire
world. I think we got our money's worth. (Applause.)

Part of my college education was paid for by a national
defense education loan. I was proud to pay it back on time with
interest, but I was proud to get it, too. I think America was better
off because people in my generation were able to get help to go to
college. And these young people today live in a time when the
percentage of a family's income, a middle-class family's income,
required to finance a college education, is far greater than it was when
my generation went to college.

So I say to you -- we should invest in scholarships for
children who need it. We should invest in the college loan program. We
should do that. (Applause.) I have sent a budget to the Congress
consistent with the balanced budget plan that will let 1 million young
people engage in work study programs so they can help to work themselves
through college and that would give our families a tax deduction for the
cost of college tuition up to $10,000 a year. I think that's the kind
of thing we ought to have. (Applause.)

So I ask you to think about these challenges that we face.
How are we going to build stronger families and give every child a
childhood? How are we going to guarantee quality education to all
Americans? How are we going to declare or develop a system for economic
security for working families?

You know, this is an amazing economy we have. We have more
new businesses started every year than ever before. The last three
years, every year broke a record. We have more new self-made
millionaires than ever before -- not people who gave them anything,
people who used the opportunities of this age. But we also have more
than half of our wage earners working harder without ever getting a
raise. And we have in a lot of big companies people who got downsized
in these corporations who now don't know what they're supposed to do,
and we have to find things for them to do.

So what we have to do is to find a way consistent with our
values to keep the economy going, to keep creating more jobs, but to do
it in a way that enables every American working family to benefit from
that, consistent with our values. And we know if we grow together that
we'll all be better off.

If everybody has a chance, we're all better off. That's
the kind of thing I want you to think about. (Applause.) Every single
challenge, you have to ask yourself: What should I be doing about that,
what should my community be doing about that, can my church, can my
synagogue do something about that, should my state do something about
that, should my nation do something about that -- whether it's a
challenge for more jobs or safer streets or a cleaner environment, or
working to keep the world more peaceful and secure for our children and
their future. We have to do everything we can to work together. And
I'm doing what I can to see that this government continues on its course
of reform, and does more every day to earn your trust and respect.

But I just want to say this: Did you ever notice how there
are no cynics in a flood? There are no cynics in a tornado? There are
never any cynics in a natural disaster? Why? Cynicism is a luxury you
cannot afford when you have work to do. One of the things I want to say
to you is that these young people and their enthusiasm today, and those
four young people doing their service through AmeriCorps, that's what
makes this country great. The spirit of people, like this young man, he
could have said, I'm 19 years old, I've got 60, 70 years to live, I like
riding my jet ski and winning prizes. Why should I risk my neck putting
that jet ski in a raging river? He could have stayed home. And no one
would have ever known the difference. No one.

That is the way we ought to live every day. It really
bothers me when I hear people say, well, they don't believe in our
country and we can't make progress and everything's not going to get
better and none of these people we put in office are any good. That's
a bunch of bull. (Laughter.) And it's a lousy excuse for inaction.
It's a lousy excuse for inaction. (Applause.)

Just remember something. I have one opportunity that none
of you can ever have unless you get to be President, and it has nothing
to do with me. Whenever I leave the borders of the United States of
America, and I go to other countries, and I see people cheering, they
are not cheering for Bill Clinton, they are not even cheering for the
President, they are cheering for America. (Applause.)

I cannot possibly convey, I don't have the words to tell
you what it feels like to represent all of you and to be the country in
the eyes of people from other lands. But I can tell you this -- they
know we're a pretty great place. John Kennedy said once in the middle
of the Cold War that freedom has many difficulties and our country was
far from perfect, but we never had to put up a wall to keep our people
in. And I want all of you to remember that. (Applause.)

I believe that the young people at this college are facing
the greatest future, the greatest age of possibility our country has
ever known. But every one of us knows that we have enormous challenges.
There are a lot of people fulfilling their dreams, but we have to make
the American Dream available to everybody willing to work for it. There
are a lot of people who are doing well, but there are still things that
are dividing our people when we ought to be pulling together and being
united.

And when you are tempted to give up on your country or to
give up on yourself, or to give up on your community, or to give up on
some problem you're facing in your family, remember this flood. And
remember how people just showed up and did what they were supposed to
do. Remember how courage seemed ordinary and how cynicism was a luxury
nobody could afford. And if you can recapture that, then your
community, your state and your nation will have a future that is better
than anything that has happened so far.